A Clash of Cultures at a Square in Moscow

Advocates for gay issues marching in downtown Moscow in May. Angry over the demonstration, some young Orthodox Christians began patrols near a chapel that had become a meeting place for homosexuals.Credit
Sergey Ponomarev/Associated Press

MOSCOW, July 11 — They came, they said, to clean the square. Every evening for several weeks, a dozen or so Orthodox Christian youths gathered at a chapel monument in a central Moscow park around seven o’clock in the evening, roping off a perimeter and shooing away the people chatting and drinking beer on the chapel steps.

The youths—who call themselves the Georgiyevtsy, after St. George, the patron saint of Moscow — said they were trying to chase away the gay men who cruise the area to meet friends and look for sex.

“They are gathering around a holy place, and engaging in very shocking activities, kissing, and not only,” said Diana Romanovskaya, a 19-year-old organizer of the youth patrol, who said she and others were inspired after advocates for gay issues attempted a demonstration in Moscow in May.

The nascent signs of gay activism in Russia — including protests and an increasing presence on the Internet — have produced a social and political reaction, encouraged by prominent political leaders like Moscow’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov.

The patrol around the chapel, which also serves as a memorial to soldiers killed in the 19th-century war between Russia and Turkey, has also attracted members of various nationalist groups, who have melded the antigay demonstration with their own battle against migrants from the Caucasus, who, they claim, similarly threaten Russia’s traditions and culture.

The situation became so fraught that riot police have now begun to patrol the park to keep out antagonists from both sides. They acted after a particularly nasty brawl one night in June involving about 100 people, which left one Armenian teenager with stab wounds. The police made more than 40 arrests in that incident, and the Russian media said skinheads joined in the fracas.

The tense confrontation suggests a parallel with the violence directed at ethnic minorities in Russia, where a current of xenophobia has grown more intense since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Igor Kon, a Russian sociologist specializing in the study of homosexuality, suggested in a recent article that antigay attitudes in Russia belie a broader distrust of society’s marginal groups.

“Homophobia is just a litmus test,” Mr. Kon said in a telephone interview. He said events like the attempted demonstration in May served as “a pretext for the mobilization of ultranationalist forces.”

Mr. Luzhkov banned the proposed protest, referring to such events as “satanic acts.” The protest’s organizers — a coalition of Russians and Europeans — were quickly arrested when they gathered in front of City Hall on May 27 to demand permission for a public demonstration. As police officers and antiriot troops looked on, nationalists and religious radicals attacked the few demonstrators assembled nearby who had defied the ban.

That same day, the Georgiyevtsy held their own counterprotest at the chapel, called “For Genuine Love.” They condemned what they called homosexual propaganda, and announced plans to begin their patrols of the park.

Starting on June 12, they gathered in the evenings at the chapel with a small but growing contingent of nationalists, far-right politicians and other sympathizers to assert that Russia, a country increasingly hostile to what it views as imported Western values, is unwilling to embrace rights for sexual minorities.

Photo

Police officers restraining protesters in late June in Moscow. The protesters demanded that the European Union impose a visa ban on Moscows mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov, who had called gay protests satanic acts.Credit
Misha Japaridze/Associated Press

Referring to the failed demonstration, Ms. Romanovskaya said: “If we allow such events in Moscow, we will show everyone that we will become just like the rest of Europe. Our country is special. We have cultural values.”

One night early in the patrol, before the police essentially closed down the park, two young gay men sat on a wall at the perimeter of the square, watching as the protesters cleaned empty bottles and other trash from around the chapel.

One, Yuri Dyomin, said he would resist any pressure to leave the square.

“We have friends here,” he said. “Even if they’re gay, it doesn’t mean they should be kicked out.”

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Gay men first started congregating around the chapel on Ilinsky Square about 10 years ago, when a previous meeting place in front of the Bolshoi Theater was disrupted by construction, according to Eduard Mishin, the editor of Russia’s leading magazine for gay people.

In 1993, the Russian government scrapped a Stalin-era law that made “sodomy” — gay sex — a crime. But public attitudes have not softened toward male homosexuality. Lesbianism is largely dismissed in Russia and remains generally outside of social discourse.

So gay life here remains largely underground, though gay men and lesbians are generally free to do as they please when out of public view, and antigay violence is still relatively rare compared with attacks against Russia’s dark-skinned minorities. Most gay men and lesbians remain outside of politics, and many, even prominent advocates for gay issues, opposed plans to hold the demonstration in May.

“What have we gained from this parade?” said Mr. Mishin, who strongly criticized the failed demonstration. “Where are our rights? All that’s happened is that it has become harder for gays to go out in the street.”

To the patrol’s supporters, the gay men who frequent the park are the aggressors.

“The sexual minorities have occupied territory,” said Larisa Pavlova, a member of a local parents’ association. She suggested that the area around the monument had become a site not only for gay cruising, but also for prostitution and drug dealing.

“The place where our kids used to stroll is now home to all kinds of vulgar acts,” she said.

The Orthodox youth group has disavowed using force to remove gay men from the park, and claims that its members have been victims of several violent attacks near the monument. In one incident, someone fired on the patrol group with an air gun, hitting a person in the neck, several witnesses said.

Though the police refused to comment, several members of the patrol accused gay people of organizing an intimidation campaign against them.

While the protests lasted, more outspoken groups set up an unofficial protection service for the Georgiyevtsy, and on most nights, young men with shaved heads and army boots outnumbered the patrol’s founders. As their movement grew, so did the specter of more violence, which eventually caused the police to intervene.

Just before 10 o’clock one night during the patrol, the Orthodox youths were barely visible on the square amid a throng of well-built Russian men, most no older than 25, standing in loose formation around the chapel. One, Simon V. Gruzinsky, dressed in black with an orange beard, said he came to recapture the square for what he called normal Russians.

“There’s a great summer feel to the place,” he said, smiling. “You could say we’re preparing for battle.”

Correction: July 12, 2007

A headline and article yesterday about a Russian Orthodox Christian group’s patrols of a Moscow park to evict gay men who like to gather there incorrectly implied that the patrols were continuing. While they began in mid-June, the police stopped them on June 23, following a brawl at the park involving some of the group’s members.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: A Clash of Cultures at a Square in Moscow. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe